Yearly Archives: 2007

I’ve just spent the past few days moving and consolidating five room’s worth of stuff into two to make room for a new tenant, and boy I am exhausted! That’s a LOT of furniture, equipment, books, etc., and I’m not exactly Mr. Universe. Hopefully, I’ll have enough energy to get through the wedding tomorrow in one piece. So if you happen to drop in on me, do note that I am now in the back of the suite instead of the front. Don’t worry, I haven’t skipped town and your wedding masters haven’t disappeared forever! My address is still the same as well. One really cool thing about this move is that for the first time in 10 years, I’ve been able to organize my studio from the ground up in a way that makes sense for the business’ current structure and workflow. I can’t wait to show it off once everything is organized.

Just in case one of the 2.5 readers of this blog happens to know someone who might be interested, I have a beautiful 1134 s.f. five-room suite for rent right next door. Windows in every room, kitchenette, great part of town, and an awesome landlord! 😉 Just putting it out there…

It’s great to start posting wedding video clips again as we head into a busier than usual spring. Here are the highlights from Elizabeth & Jonathan’s 2/17/07 snowy wedding weekend at St. Mary Catholic Church and Fountain Square Theatre:

I did some videotaping yesterday for one of the cutest couples I’ve gotten to know in recent years. They’re not married, engaged or even dating – in fact, that would be kind of icky. They’re Tiffany Stoner and Nate Rowe, sibling partners of Nathanial Edmunds Photography. We were working on a video intro for their new website, and I’m not sure how much “fun” it was for them to be on camera, but they sure had ME on the verge of cracking up the entire time! The way that they bicker and complete each other’s sentences, it’s no wonder many people (like me a few years ago) initially assume they’re married. Tiff wrote a neat story on their blog recently that sums them up really well. I can’t wait to piece together what we shot, especially the outtakes! Tiff also brought me the sweetest “thank-you” gift today. I’m looking forward to a doing a couple more family-related things with them coming up – I wonder if that could include swapping twins?

This coming week is going to be a challenging one at the studio, as I will be moving my entire business out of its three rooms in my five-room suite and into the other two. I’m making room to sublease to a new tenant, Gene Voss of First Security Insurance Services, which will be the first time I’ve had regular company here for a few years. It does get lonely sometimes, and just having another person around has always helped keep me motivated. Until that time, however, I will have much painting, carpet cleaning, utility switching, moving and organizing to look forward to. Thank goodness I’m all caught up with the wedding edits!

And by the way – GO HOOSIERS!

Are there any sensations in life more invigorating than that first feeling of spring in the air? I was fortunate to have a couple of fun things lined up to get me out of the studio on this gorgeous day. First I went to Ami Gallery and Photography Studio to tape a couple of talking head shots for two of their photographers. Lois Wyant plans to use these and several previously shot videos to allow visitors to “get to know” the photographers represented by the studio. Cool idea! After Jim Wyant nailed an unrehearsed yet eloquent on-camera presentation in one take, he shared with me a heartbreakingly beautiful album of his recent mission trip to India. This work earned him a rare perfect 100 score by the Professional Photographers of Indiana (PPI), a feat made all the more impressive when you consider that only five perfect scores have ever been given in Indiana, and Jim has earned THREE of them!

Then I met up with my good friend, photographer Angela Talley, who treated me to a delicious lunch at Chappie’s in the Village Center at WestClay. We were joined of course by her ridiculously perfect little girl Lucia, who has got to be the easiest baby to get a smile out of. The weather was perfect for strolling with Lucia to and from Angela’s beautiful home and studio a few blocks away. I just love that area and wish we had a good excuse to move there!

It was icing on the cake to return to the studio and learn that we just got hired to cover the wedding of developer Bob Lauth’s daughter Leigh Ann this spring. This represents a feeling of coming full circle for me, as it will be the first wedding we have covered with international Gala Award-winning event designer Gary Bravard in about seven years, and with 600 guests at Second Presbyteran Church and the Indiana Roof Ballroom, this has all the earmarks of a classic Bravard event. Also, Leigh Ann’s mother Robin hired me eight years ago to cover her daughter’s Park Tudor graduation weekend, which ironically also included a ceremony and reception at the same two venues. I’ll never forget the great performance that night by The Why Store, or the sight of Colts owner Jim Irsay hamming it up for me on the dance floor, which might make some handy blackmail footage someday!

The kids and I just spent a fun weekend at the Omni Severin Hotel to give Mommy a little breather. I’ve covered many events there over the years, but this was my first chance to experience their four-diamond hospitality from a guest’s perspective, and they did not disappoint. (Not that they could have disappointed us anyway, since our stay was on the house!) We took full advantage of their pool, movies, video games, gift shop and excellent food. Despite my failed efforts to prank call Carrie Logie soon after check-in, she was kind enough to surprise us with cookies and milk delivered to our room. I can’t thank Carrie and her staff enough for accomodating us, and for being so good to IndyVisual in general.

When we weren’t racking up incidentals in the hotel, we strolled around Circle Center Mall, goofed off at Pan Am Plaza, took a trip to the top of the Soldiers & Sailors Monument, enjoyed the boys’ first horse-carriage ride (even spotting photographer Erin Hession and company along the way), and made the mandatory stop at the kids’ favorite store, Downtown Comics. All in all, a perfect weekend with the boys on one of my last remaining free ones before the April weddings hit.

I also need to give thanks to videographer John King for a spontaneous and enjoyable dinner on Thursday. John was the most established videographer in town as I was getting started, and we first met oddly enough at a convention in Orlando. The first lunch we had there ended up being one of the most impactful moments of my career, as John unselfishly passed along to me a lot of wisdom and insight that immediately helped me take this business to the next level. He continues to groom tomorrow’s media professionals as an instructor at the J. Everett Light Career Center, and I have been honored to serve on his advisory committee there ever since.

I was planning to complete most of the remaining work on Elizabeth and Jonathan’s 2/17/07 wedding video today. However, the laid-back nature of this time of our year, along with my general fatigue from finishing the website update, made me vulnerable to procrastination. Stacy Newgent of Stacy and Mary Photography dangled the first carrot by inviting me to their new studio to try out an experimental portrait approach that they explained on their blog much better than I can here. Though I generally dislike how I look in pictures, I was intrigued by the prospect of being a lab rat in the name of art. Unfortunately, Stacy and I couldn’t resist just gabbing the whole time before I had to leave. Anyway, it was great to see their cool studio. Maybe next time, gals!

Then my friend and neighbor, DJ Jim Cerone, treated me to lunch at the Nickel Plate Bar & Grill in Fishers for great food (thanks for suggesting the buffalo chicken wrap, Stacy!) and a nice long chat. We’ve known each other for over a dozen years, and our boys have become classmates and friends at school, but this is the first time we’ve ever really had a chance to sit down and talk without either our kids or wedding festivities distracting us.

I got back to the studio just in time to take a call from a potential client (thanks to Rebecca Raymond and Tracy Heine for the referral!) who unknowingly made my day by telling me she really enjoyed the video clips on our website. You see, she’s a Mac user, the likes of whom had often had trouble viewing our sample videos in their Windows Media format, hence the big website overhaul. It’s so nice to get such quick feedback that the Flash video clips are succeeding in giving our website better cross-platform compatibility.

Well, it took a couple of weeks longer than I had planned, but I finally uploaded our “new” website over the weekend! I put “new” in quotes because it’s still essentially the same website with a few nice tweaks on each page. But what I’m most excited about is the new method of letting visitors view our video samples, which I completely redesigned from the ground up. My main objective was to allow the videos to be embedded within the page as Flash video clips, as hinted at from my experiments with Google Video and YouTube. Ultimately, to be able to show things exactly the way I wanted, I knew that I would have to author the site (with much help from Cathy Gerlach) and host the clips myself, hence the extra time. It was a huge yet very educational challenge, and I’ve learned more about coding than I ever expected to know in a lifetime.

As rewarding as it has been to finally see how our videos work within the site, it’s the silly little stuff I figured out that I’m proudest of. Like the new Google map on our contact page, whose satellite imaging will make it easier to direct people to our specific building. Or the DVD simulation – getting a “hotspot” within another image to highlight while the cursor changes to a pointing hand? Probably straightforward for most techies, but a year in the works for me! Having our e-mail links work yet become unreadable to most e-mail harvesters should greatly reduce the spam that I get. Even something as simple as having our logo include transparent layers is something I should have learned long ago. There are some minor tweaks to come, but otherwise, it’s better than good – it’s DONE! Hopefully the result is a slicker, smoother viewing experience for our prospective clients. What do you think? Check it out at www.indyvisual.com.

Elizabeth and John wanted a winter wedding and got it – on a snowy weekend just days removed from the area’s heaviest snowfall in decades. The rehearsal dinner the night before at the Old Spaghetti Factory was a special treat for me, not just because of the couple’s hospitality, but also because it was where I enjoyed my first prom date in high school many years back. The couple’s generosity extended to the rest of their lucky friends and family as well, as I have never seen so many gifts handed out, with so much thought put into each one. I even scored three rock candy favors for the boys!

I had an early start covering Elizabeth’s preparations at her beautiful home north of Downtown. It’s the kind of house my wife and I always drool over, Victorian but new. (Someday…) Once we got to St. Mary’s Catholic Church, we navigated through a maze of narrow paths of shoveled snow (not easy with all this gear) to get inside for pictures with Joe Defabis. The ceremony and mass were long as expected, but enjoyable nonetheless. To see this sweet couple, who I knew put more planning and detail into this day than most couples do, finally have their moment (along with plenty of time to soak it all in) was a true pleasure.

The reception took place afterwards at the Fountain Square Theatre just southeast of Downtown. Surprisingly, it was the first time I had ever seen this Fountain Square area that I had heard so much about, so I was quite impressed and made a mental note to bring the kids sometime. The theatre itself was like a whole new world that you don’t expect when you enter it from the outside, with an outdoor village atmosphere similar to the Indiana Roof Ballroom, but smaller and more intimate. Having a spacious dance floor and an entire stage to roam allowed me to get some perspectives that I don’t normally enjoy at most receptions, so I’m looking forward to editing the footage in the coming days.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been over a week since the Colts won the Super Bowl, but after countless hours of reading every article I could find and watching every morsel of Colts coverage I could fit on my TiVo, I think I’m finally ready to get on with being a productive member of society, albeit with an extra bounce in my step. I am completely caught up with all of our wedding edits, and once I settle on an ideal format for showcasing the video clips, I’ll look forward to sharing those highlights here. My main focus this week has been catching up on all the “little” projects that I have accumulated over the past several months and completing an update of our website. I’m doing much of this from my home for these couple of days, and the view out my window of the heavy snowfall actually makes a perfectly serene backdrop for working.

I had the pleasure of attending a brunch Sunday at the Omni Severin Hotel organized by the Association of Bridal Consultants. It was fun as always to chat with fellow vendors there, but the highlight of the event was a presentation by nationally reknowned bridal consultant Barbara Wallace. She had a lot of wonderful insights to share, primarily aimed at the consultants there but applicable to anyone in business, about how to get to the top of your field and stay there. While I did pick some good tips, most of what she said already mirrored what my approach has been, so I left with a sense of affirmation that I’m on the right track.